By the time he reached them, Max had the smoker and the third attacker on their knees by the curb. The man with the knife in his neck had to be dead.
When Cristiano reached them, he squatted to face the first man who’d approached Sandra. They exchanged words until Cristiano seized him by the neck—or was it his trachea?
Cristiano released him and circled the two men. He stopped behind the smoker, accepted a machete from Max, and decapitated him in one clean slice. I covered my mouth to hold in my scream as the body slumped over, bleeding and convulsing.
Vomit rose up my throat, and I swallowed over and over to force it back down.
I wanted to look away, but I forced myself not to. I’d wanted answers, and I was getting them. I wasn’t sure what they meant yet, and perhaps I’d regret having them. But I was beyond the point where I could look away.
Cristiano moved behind the last one and paused. I held my breath as I waited for him to send the last man’s head the same way of the smoker’s.
But Cristiano passed the machete back to Max and gestured for Sandra to take his place. She didn’t hesitate—just sliced her blade across the man’s neck, leaving him a bloody heap with the others.
I’d heard the rumors, but I’d not yet seen Cristiano in action. He’d delivered death without hesitation—and faster than it would’ve taken me to cross the street to him.
That was the vicious killer I’d grown up with. The man who’d stolen me out from underneath his brother. That was also the man whose tie I’d fixed earlier, who’d just made a crude joke, who’d served me duck confit over a bed of precious memories.
That was my husband.
And he’d been right—I wasn’t ready.
I put my head between my knees and retched.
15
Natalia
Black, vomit-splattered pavement blurred with tears as I emptied my stomach again. The car door had been opened, and a hand had gathered my hair into a too-tight ponytail, away from my face.
“You puked in the car and somehow managed to avoid your shoes,” Cristiano said, wrapping my hair around his wrist. “Mine weren’t so lucky.”
I wasn’t sure if I was crying in response to the vomit or for what I’d just seen. I looked past Cristiano’s blood-splattered pantlegs. Max had a bound-and-gagged woman over his shoulder as he hurriedly transported her from the back of the attackers’ SUV to one of Cristiano’s. Eduardo did the same with a different girl. “Where are they taking them?”
“Got it all out? We have to move,” Cristiano said. “Get up.”
“I can’t,” I said, the words grating from my raw throat.
“La policía will be here soon,” he said. “And as I told you before, they’re not on my payroll. Either they’ll find an abandoned car and a pile of vomit or they’ll find an abandoned car, vomit, and you.” He took my elbow. “Let’s go.”
I let him yank me out of the car as Max shut the doors to his car and climbed back behind the steering wheel. Blood and guts painted the broken pavement.
“They’re taking the girls somewhere safe,” he said, dragging me along.
Disoriented, I tried piecing the scene together. “Then why are they still gagged?”
“So they don’t scream and fight. If Belmonte-Ruiz sends men after us, or if law enforcement shows up, it’ll get ugly. We need to go now. You’re walking too slow.”
He ducked, hauled me over his shoulder, and carried me to the Audi.
After settling me into the passenger’s seat and securing my seatbelt, he removed his shoes, went to the trunk, and returned with a fresh pair.
Within seconds, we were speeding away.
I gripped the door handle in an attempt to quell my uneasy stomach. “During the Easter party, you said you weren’t going to pay for another shipment,” I said. “You were going to take it instead.”
“That’s what I did.”
He rescued them?
That would change everything. Everything.
It would mean he wasn’t a monster at all—at least not to them. Only to me. Could that possibly be true? “I don’t understand,” I said.
“Belmonte-Ruiz is the leading sex trafficker in the country—one of the top in Central and South America. They’re not easy to get to, so I interrupt them where I can.”
“Like you did to Diego?” I asked as more puzzle pieces fit together.
“Pretty much. Nobody who traffics for Belmonte-Ruiz is safe from me. I try to intercept shipments or in this case, hit their own men on a small job.” Cristiano steered into the next lane with one hand on top of the wheel. “The Calavera cartel doesn’t traffic people, Natalia.”
“Help me understand,” I pleaded. “After everything I’ve heard, I don’t get why you’d help anyone.”
He set his jaw, staring forward. “Because you came in here with your mind made up. You saw what you wanted to see, Natalia, but it’s time to open your damn eyes.”